Ficlet: The Ice Princess

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

"Who did she turn into?"

"Someone she didn't like very much. You see, when she was not much bigger than you, some men came and killed her parents and took away her sister."

"Why?"

"Because there was gold under their house. So the girl grew into a woman and found the man who had led them, and she killed him. It took her a long time to realise that doing that made her a bit like him."

"I wanted a story about a princess."

"This is one. Because she became the ice princess after that. That's what they all called her."

"She was made of ice? But then you'd be able to see through her, and she'd break too easily."

"Oh no, neither of those things would happen because, you see, the ice was all on the inside. Anyway, one day she met four people and she stayed with them, just because she didn't have anything better to do. But she couldn’t get very close to them, because then the ice would melt, and she was afraid that if it did, she'd just have this big hollow space inside."

"What happened to her?"

"One day, one of them, the ice prince, a man who was even colder than she was, killed the only person he cared about any more."

"Why?"

"Because he was afraid too. Afraid of being melted by his friend, and afraid of liking anyone, because he thought that if he did, he would lose them. The ice prince was not very clever--although he thought he was--because he didn't know that if he didn't have anything to lose, that meant he didn't have anything."

"Oh. That makes sense. Silly man."

"Yes. And that's when the ice princess realised that she was turning into someone just like him, and it was almost too late."

"So what happened?"

"She was rescued."

"By a knight in a white spaceship?"

"No. By a man who had no ice in him at all. A man of air and water."

"That doesn't sound very interesting."

"But it was. It is. Fizzy drinks are made of that, and so are bubbles. So she realised that melted ice was a good thing after all."

"What happened to the ice prince?"

"He got just what he wanted. No one at all to care about him, or for him to care about."

"That's sad."

"Not to him. If you're filled with ice long enough, you stop feeling anything."

"Then it was lucky that the princess melted in time. Did she and the knight live happily ever after?"

"They have so far." Soolin leant over and gently touched her lips to the boy's soft smooth forehead, stroked his fair hair, and tiptoed out.

Vila was standing there in the hallway, smiling at her. "A knight?"

"Of passion, yes." She kissed him and took his hand and they went to bed.

I used line # 62: Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001).